


he's got the answer it doesn't go away

by factorielle



Series: KiKasa Week [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Awkward Conversations, First Impressions, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1920687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It figures that the universe won't even give Kasamatsu the luxury of hindsight bias.</p><blockquote>
  <p>“Does this usually happen, senpai?” Nakamura asked with a frown. “Asking the team their opinion on new recruits?”<br/>“Not last year,” Moriyama said, his form already folded and stored away in a pocket. “I’m pretty sure Coach tried to get at least three of those Uncrowned guys, but he certainly didn’t want to know how we felt about it."</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	he's got the answer it doesn't go away

"Remember," Coach Takeuchi said as Hayakawa peeled off a sheet of paper and passed the stack to Kasamatsu, "this club is not a democracy." The form was divided into five even sections, each headed by the familiar sequence of number-position-name. Then two check boxes, and four areas for pros and cons on technique and behavior.

"This," Coach pointed at the forms now in Nakamura's hands, "is not a vote. The final decision comes to me. But whoever we scout here will be the backbone of Kaijou's team for the next three years and I want your informed opinions. The more detailed the better. I'll meet you here after the game. Dismissed."

The third-years had stayed at school to fit in one more practice before the Interhigh started, and the absence of a captain to take a cue from made the answering "yes sir" wildly disorganized.

"Does this usually happen, senpai?" Nakamura asked with a frown. "Asking the team their opinion on new recruits?"

"Not last year," Moriyama said, his form already folded and stored away in a pocket. "I'm pretty sure he tried to get at least three of those Uncrowned guys, but he certainly didn't want to know how we felt about it.  And it's not like he's planning on taking our opinions into account this time around, either."

"He might," Kasamatsu said, staring at the first line. _#4, PG, Akashi_. "Just maybe not the way he says." Akashi Seijuurou had been featured in Basketball Monthly three times in the past two years; wherever he went, he would likely snag the point guard position and hold on to it for the next three years. How was Kasamatsu supposed to be objective about recruiting him?

He shook his head, slid the sheet in his bag. "It'll be interesting to watch them play anyway," he said absently, more to himself than Moriyama. "Let's go."

The team followed after him.

* * *

  
The lights were still on in the clubroom.

The rest of the team had shuffled away after practice so quickly that Kasamatsu had found the locker room mostly empty by the time he'd left the showers, but here the lights were still on, and there was work yet to do.

"Practice is over," he said, entering the room. "What are you still doing here?"

Kise was exactly where Kasamatsu had expected him, sitting at the small desk in a back corner of the room, from where Coach routinely observed taped games and his team all at once. The cabinet's doors were open, tapes and DVD's ordered by year and prefecture on the top shelves. The mess of loose documents that had populated the lower shelves since Kasamatsu had joined Kaijou was scattered on and around the desk.

"I wasn't at practice," Kise said, expression closed off. He'd taken it with grace earlier when Coach had explained that having the ace twitching impatiently on the bench every day through practice was doing nothing for morale, but that good will was clearly a thing of the past. "Coach sent me here to sort the paperwork."

"I know that," Kasamatsu said, "except you're not doing that, you're—" _just sitting there_ , he was about to say when he caught a glimpse of the forms strewn across the desk, and, belatedly, recognized the expression on Kise's face. "—sulking."

Kise shot him a wounded look. "I'm not sulking!" he protested hotly before returning his attention to the desk.

Kasamatsu couldn't tell his own writing apart from Kobori's at that that distance and upside down, but Kobori hadn't broken off the tip of his pencil checking the ‘do not recommend' box opposite Aomine Daiki's name. Kasamatsu had even circled the box twice, just in case his scathingly detailed opinion of Teikou's ace wasn't clear enough.

The sheet was right in front of Kise. If Kasamatsu had given those forms a second thought in the past year, he would have thought they'd been thrown away once Coach had made his decision on which of the Miracles to scout.

Then again, he _had_ seen the contents of the cabinet before. Maybe he should have been prepared for this.

"Right, then," he said, turning around. "Don't forget to lock up when you're done."

He barely had time to get his hand on the door handle. Kise's continued survival in the cutthroat world of show business was a constant source of surprise to him.

"Midorimacchi?" Kise asked plaintively.

Kasamatsu had once read an article about the way cats learned to modulate their meowing to best irritate their owners into doing what they wanted. Those manipulative bastards, he'd learned within two weeks of entering his last year of high school, had nothing on Kise Ryouta.

"Yes," he said, gripping the handle tight. "I recommended him. What of it?"

"Why?" Kise whined, prolonging the word much longer than necessary.

Kasamatsu breathed in deep, then turned to look at Kise, who was still stubbornly staring down.

"Because he wouldn't need to be broken in to be of use," he said flatly. The exact words he'd used then were lost to him, but the gist remained. Of the five monsters on the court, Midorima had been the only one Kasamatsu could see himself work with. "He seemed like he would fit into a more structured environment."

"You think Teikou wasn't structured? We had three strings! Our practices alone—" It was jarring, the defensiveness, as if Kise had yet to shed his old uniform.

"I think Teikou fostered individual play over teamwork." It should have gone without saying, but this was Kise. Sometimes it paid to state the obvious. "Did you look at the numbers at the back?"

Kise frowned, turned the form over. "Thirty-one, twenty, four. What are those?"

Those, he remembered. "From the second quarter on, after a Teikou player received or intercepted the ball: shots taken directly or after a drive, passes to the point guard, passes to any other player." He let Kise read the numbers again. "None of you passed to anyone but Akashi. That's not structure, that's a cult of personality."

"It's how we won," Kise said defensively. "It's how we won everything, even—" He bit his lip, put the form back down, but the words were between them even without being spoken out loud.

_Even the summer tournaments._

_"_ That's not how Kaijou plays," Kasamatsu told him. "You know that." And he could say that it hadn't mattered in the end, that he still wasn't sure this had really been about the Generation of Miracles in the first place, but that was hardly the point, was it? "It's late and I'm hungry. Ask the real question."

Kise shook his head.

Kasamatsu waited.

"There's nothing to ask," Kise said, biting off each word. "It's all written out. You don't want me here."

Kasamatsu forgot, sometimes, that for all his worldliness and attitude Kise was still only fifteen.

(No, sixteen now. The whole team had ended up crowded at a family restaurant on his birthday, an unexpected celebration that nobody had really engineered and that had made half of them miss curfew. Not that it made much of a difference.)

"No," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "I didn't. Not after watching that game, not after Coach announced that Kaijou had recruited you." _#8, SF, Kise Ryouta_ had only been a marginal improvement over _#6, PF, Aomine Daiki_ in terms of attitude, and a clear loss in terms of skills. But by then, Kasamatsu had had nothing left in him but straight posture, _yes sir_ and _I'll do my best, sir._ "And certainly not after you told us your entire life story on the first day of practice."

Kise still wasn't looking at him. Kasamatsu ran a hand over his face and went on.

"Do you want to ask about now?" He had no idea where to start if Kise did. There was no revelation to speak of, only fragments of understanding gleaned during post-game dinners, bits of trivia Kasamatsu hadn't meant to file away, and a smile tugging at his lips when Kuramoto-san, who'd had Kise's framed autograph hung on the wall beside her frayed Kaijou flag since Golden Week, had brought out the cake.

"Or do you want to pack up and try to get to Kuramoto's before they're out of onion soup?"

Kise looked up at last, the pout fading slightly.

"It's been back on the menu since Monday," Kasamatsu added, and watched the slow widening of Kise's eyes, the smile that spread across his face.

"Okay," Kise said at last, getting up. "I'll just…" he looked helplessly at the mess of paperwork in front of him, then shook his head, gathered them all into one big heap. He tapped the stack on the table a few times to align the sheets into a proper pile, set it down at the corner of the desk, and paused.

"I remember my first practice here," he said slowly, like he was testing out his words. He stepped away from the desk, faced Kasamatsu head on, with nothing between them, standing his ground. "I thought you were a stuck-up control freak who was out to ruin my high school life."

Kasamatsu snorted, kept his fists and elbows and feet to himself despite the nagging urge to wipe that irritating half-smirk off of Kise's face. "Fair enough," he said, and "get a move on, we'll have to be back early tomorrow to finish up here."

Kise blinked once, then nodded, and fell into step with him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> For KiKasa Week: Day 1, First Impressions  
> Title from Duran Duran's First Impression, because I'm creative that way.


End file.
